OBSESSIVE PEOPLE LOOK FOR REASONS to go on living. Now that I have a house and
a wife and a kid I have a lot of motivation. But when I was younger things were
different: I had a horrible job (taxi driver), a horrible apartment (cramped,
dark, infested), and five-figure dental problems. I needed inspiration. I needed
a goal, a quest. I needed to think about something other than how I was losing
my teeth.

In the East Village of the Lower East Side of New York, in the '70s and '80s,
obsessives fixated on heroin or music. I chose tunes. My technique was simple.
Step one: fixate on an artist. Perhaps a friend passes on a compilation cassette.
Gee, what was that great cut with the chugging synth line? Main title from "
The Never-Ending Story," a German kid-fantasy, huge in Europe, bomb in the
States. Artist: Limahl. Of course, Limahl. Every record outlet has a Limahl
section, right?

Maybe I'd be rereading a Lester Bangs' essay from "Psychotic Reactions and
Carburetor Dung"  some "Creem" column from perhaps 10 or 12 years
before  and decide I had to have the Iggy Pop/James Williamson "
I Got A Right," and I had to have it RIGHT NOW. And not the LP version,
either (if there was one), or the CD (right, not invented yet)  it had
to be the 45, the only version with that raw, hyper-compressed, grooves-carved-in-your-flesh
sound.

Or maybe it would come from a movie. At one point in the mid-'70s I went
with some friends to see "Mean Streets." After the shock of "Taxi Driver"  which I saw maybe 20 times, leading to my move to NYC  I was looking
for anything else by this guy Scorsese. Sitting there in the dark as the typewritten
credits flashed on the screen, there was this SOUND.
The main title for "Mean Streets" was, of course, "Be My Baby" by the Ronettes,
which I had somehow slept through on its first appearance in 1963.

Thus began one of my most satisfying obsessions  a 20-year search
of any vinyl archive I could uncover. In collectors' shops, record fairs, flea
markets, and Pennysavers, I sought my self-appointed Holy Grail. But more on
that in a minute...

SHORTLY AFTER MY EXPOSURE TO THE GENIUS of Phil Spector  the producer
of "Be My Baby"  Warner Brothers Records released the double-LP "Phil
Spector's Greatest Hits." I picked it up. Great record: the surreal "Wall of
Sound," Spector's trademark, meaning maybe three guys playing the same bass
line, four or five rhythm guitarists strumming away, two pianists playing the
same chords in different registers, percussionists plugging away on maracas
and castanets, a full symphony string section, and underneath it all the drums
of Hal Blaine ("my five favorite drummers", according to Max Weinberg) piped
through the galactic dimensions of the Gold Star Studios echo chamber.

All this sounds like a mess, but it isn't; all of Spector's productions have
a solid beat  they swing, in fact  and in each number some distinctive
solo instrument rides clearly above the mix, carefully placed, articulating
the hooks. (Take a listen to the acoustic guitar in this segment from "Uptown.") One of the most interesting components in the Wall of Sound is the horn section,
which modulates through the chords without accent, like a pianist who hits a
chord once and then holds down the reverb pedal until the next harmonic shift.
Other elements define the beat but the horns provide an invisible wash behind
everything.

And those vocals on the top! Ronnie of the Ronettes, of course  later
Veronica when Phil was pushing her as a solo artist, and later still, Ronnie
Spector when she ended her career by marrying him. (According to Ronnie's book,
"Be My Baby: How I Survived Mascara, Miniskirts, and Madness, or My Life As
a Fabulous Ronette," she lived as a prisoner in Phil's L.A. mansion, finally
escaping in bare feet with only the clothes on her back.)

Ronnie had a weird natural vibrato  almost a tremolo, really  that modulated her little-girl timbre into something that penetrated the Wall
of Sound like a nail gun. It is an uncanny instrument. Sitting on a ragged couch
in my railroad flat, I could hear her through all the arguments on the street,
the car alarms, the sirens. She floated above the sound of New York while also
being a part of it  a Bronx-born Latina stomping her foot on the sidewalk
and insisting on being heard.

There were other singers as well  Darlene Love later became even more
important to me than Ronnie. There were The Crystals on "He's a Rebel" and "Uptown"
and "Da Doo Ron Ron," "Ben E. King on "Rose in Spanish Harlem," Sonny Charles
and the Checkmates on "
Black Pearl." But Ronnie was first.

About the same time as the American release of "Greatest Hits," Spector (who
controlled all the rights to his catalog) set up a distribution arrangement
with Polydor for a label called Phil Spector International, whose first and
only release was a five-LP series called "The Phil Spector Wall of Sound." Featured
were greatest hits collections from The Ronettes, The Crystals, Bobb B. Soxx
and the Blue Jeans, and Phil himself. (I wasn't interested in the last one since
all the tunes on it were drawn from the other three LPs or the Warner Brothers
collection.)

What did interest me, however, was LP number 5: "The Phil Spector Wall of Sound
Vol. 5: Rare Masters." To an obsessive, of course, the words "rare master" are
Pavlovian triggers like "never released", "obscure B-side" and "the Beatles
butcher-cover." That it turned out to be a great record was irrelevant  I
had no choice. I was Ahab, the white whale was off the starboard. Somehow I
got the money (probably around six or seven dollars) and "Rare Masters" was
in my hands.

And it is a great record. There is the never-released Ronettes' version of Harry
Nilsson's "Paradise,"
which for years existed only as a rumor. And an unknown April Stevens solo cut
 she was usually half of a brother-sister act with sibling Nino Tempo
 called "Why Can't a Boy and Girl Just Stay In Love." There is an obscure
B-side known as "Torpedo Rock," a deliberately obnoxious instrumental, typical
of what Spector sometimes placed on flip sides so the impact of the A-side wouldn't
be diluted.

Finally there are two masterpieces, songs as good as "Be My Baby" or "River
Deep Mountain High." The first is a Veronica number called "Why Don't They Let
Us Fall In Love." Phil opens with a seismic riff  a sax line of tectonic
dimension, especially on crankin’ speakers  but the song's just starting,
and the second time through he adds the backup vocals: "Bop
bop bop, bop bop ba-dah-dah dah-dah..." I'm sitting on that couch in the dark,
my next-door neighbor is pounding on the wall, and I can't get up to turn it
down! I am not prepared for this  I haven't even heard the chorus and
I'm like  what? St. Theresa in Ecstasy? Jesse Orosco at the bottom of
the pile, end of the '86 World Series?

Then Ronnie's vocal floats in on the top: "Why do they say that / we're too
young to go steady / Don't they believe that / I love you already / See the
stars are shiny and bright / I wish we could go out tonight / Why don't they
let us fall in love? / Why don't they let us fall in love? / Yeah yeah yeah
yeah..." My reaction to this kind of lyric, in this kind of setting, is what finally
convinces me that  like Brian Wilson  "I just wasn't made for
these times". I mean, I'm in tears, I'm a grown man and moved to tears by this
teeny-bop concoction, this early '60s equivalent of Britney Spears. (Phil called
them "little symphonies for the kids.") But it's not Britney Spears  it's
better. It gets to me. It defeats the cynic within, dismantles the censoring
mechanism, and bypasses the cool-meter. I achieve the actual, never-articulated
goal of the obsessionist: the ecstatic experience.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU REALLY CONNECT with a song like "Why Don't They Let Us
Fall In Love"? As in Eliot's definition of poetry, the object communicates before
it is understood. Why is it so intense? Maslow called it the "peak experience"
 a few seconds of "intense ecstasy... during which the self is transcended."
And I am addicted, I live for these ecstatic moments. They are so few; they
are never forgotten. I can close my eyes and summon them instantly...

Third
row seat, right in the middle, the huge Zeigfeld Theater on 54th Street. It's
the premiere of the restored "Vertigo" and Kim Novak is sitting about ten
seats away. Sonic Youth is there  I talk to Thurston Moore about Bernard
Herrmann. The ecstatic moment: Judy walks out of the bathroom, bathed in green
light, the French-curl hair style finally in place and Madeline's reincarnation
complete. Herrmann's score swells.

Sitting
on a bar stool in the East Village, circa 1988. It's late; I've come in after
my shift in the cab. The bartender has green hair and the place is packed,
still wall-to-wall with punks and assorted scumbags at 3 in the morning. Through
the fog of cigarette smoke, at deafening volume, "Don't Fear the Reaper" plays
on the jukebox. I realize for the first time what the words are.

Somehow
I have a ticket to the RSC production of "Liaisons Dangereuses" on Broadway.
I have a box seat, looking almost straight down on the heads of the players
on the stage. I don't know the book  I read a rave review in the Times
and wanted to see something "classy." I'm enjoying the Christopher Hampton
dialogue very much, very clever, deliciously malicious. Suddenly, Madame de
Tourvel collapses at the feet of Allan Rickman's Valmont. A shiver like a
drug rush runs down my spine.

Or a
night out with Dave, who's just out of the Coast Guard and looking for trouble.
We start out at the Village Idiot drinking the bar wine  always a mistake.
Find ourselves at the Crystal Ballroom, one of the last true bum bars on the
Bowery, where a slumming uptown bartender has finagled a cheap P.A. and convinced
some downtown bands to play. We switch to the gin I have in a hip flask. Kim,
lead singer of Da Willys, throws herself to the floor in the middle of a an
uptempo version of "Last Train to Clarksville". She moves out into the audience
 still clutching the microphone, still singing  on her hands and
knees. I look down and she’s crawling between my legs.

The peak experience,
the ecstatic moment  whatever it is, "Rare Masters" had it happening
all over the place. I'm not even going to begin talking about "He's a Quiet
Guy," the other masterpiece, a Darlene Love tune on the B side of the LP. That
one's still a little too personal.

NOW TRY TO IMAGINE THE SCENE maybe six months after I first acquired "Rare Masters."
I'm standing in Newberry's, a drugstore blessed with a hipster buyer who controlled
the records section, which in those days were all LPs and 45s. I walk over to
the Oldies section, or the Girl Groups section, or maybe just S in the alphabetical
listing. I flip through the LPs and suddenly I'm holding "The Phil Spector Wall
of Sound Vol. 6  Rare Masters 2"!

"Rare Masters 2"! The whole series was promoted on the back of each LP, but
there was nothing anywhere about a number 2. My God! And I don’t have any
cash! Since I am a starving musician I also have no credit card. ATMs are
just beginning to appear but that doesn't help  a bank card needs a bank
account! I hurry home but I can't get back to Newberry’s till late that afternoon.
I am so sure no one else loves this music as much as me that maybe I didn't
hustle like I should. In any case, "Rare Masters 2" is gone. I'm in shock, I
walk out of Newberry's like a man with a bloody forehead walking away from a
car crash.

And I look for this record for the next twenty years...

I did find it, finally, one day in Final Vinyl, an LP treasure house in the
East Village. It cost me $50, the most I'd ever paid for a record up to that
time (I've paid more since). It was an anti-climax, of course  all the
really great tunes were on the first one. Maybe I'd changed in the meantime,
and was no longer open to the intensity I'd experienced with the original. Somehow
Phil Spector had lost the ability to get me there, to put me in the flow, to
peak me out. Who knows why? But for 20 years I had an obsession, a comforting,
distracting, and consuming passion. The object of the hunt had not been the
point, anyway  the hunt is the point. I missed it after I had the object
in my hands.

Fortunately, "Rare Masters 2" was not the only obsession. Others crowded for
attention: the bootleg "Marnie" soundtrack, the English-language version of
"Spirits of the Dead" (particularly "Toby Dammit," the Fellini episode), and
finally, the most consuming obsession of them all  the 4-CD box set,
"The Legend of Dusty Springfield." Limited release, U.K. only, 2,000 copies pressed,
withdrawn almost immediately after circulation. And I held it in my hands once
at the HMV on 86th St. and Lexington.

But that is a tale for another time.

Some books you might enjoy:

"Be My Baby: How I Survived Mascara, Miniskirts, and Madness, or My Life As a
Fabulous Ronette," by Ronnie Spector and Vince Waldron, Harper Perennial, NYC,
1991